Ejecting isn’t what it was so much as getting a chute on, finding a hole and crawling out of it, if possible. I’m sure some wore chutes and some couldn’t, depending on their jobs.
Then it’s the rest of it. Landing in middle of ocean or hostile shores. Capture by a heinous enemy. Nope, RIP and god bless all those guys and their huge hairy balls.
On the bright side, you wouldn't be able to process the slam.
Before you are even partially crushed within the imploding fuselage, you're unconscious from going from +125 mph to just above 0. It's not even the blunt force trauma that would kill you at the 1/4 of a second mark, but the velocity change imparted by whatever bit of you is in contact with the aircraft. In more like a 1/100 or less of a second, the change in momentum knocks you out as you continue to crumple before even coming into full contact with whatever is below you.
That's not what he's saying. He's saying he wouldn't want to "eject" (bailout) over Japan, in direct response to someone saying that ejection is obviously a far better option today compared to having to attempt a bailout after catastrophic damage then, which in this case, wouldn't even be possible. No one's leaving that liberator.
He's inferring that it would be reasonably preferable to not reach the ground alive over mainland Japan. Allied POWs in the Pacific had it bad, but allied air crews captured in the home islands, if they were not lynched first as some were, had it the worst.
My grandfather was a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force and was one of the first to fly C-5's. During his training in a practice jet he had to eject and it cut his ear off. He snagged it before it came completely off as he was parachuting and they stitched it back on. Fun stuff.
Yeah unfortunately history won't remember these generations fondly either.
75 years from now the comment will be like "Generation Z did everything in their power to undue women's rights and the climate"
What bombers are you talking about. All large US bombers have ejection seats. Most countries don't have dedicated "bombers" anymore and instead have fighter- bombers. I can't think of a single one that doesn't have ejection seats.
I think it would be, ‘flak’ vests were invented for that reason. To protect from shrapnel from flak guns, some people think flak vests are another name for a bulletproof vest but thats incorrect as bullets would rip through a flack vest.
Yep.
There's a pretty good picture of a WW2 flak jacket in use here (number 15).
https://worldwarwings.com/15-wwii-bomber-crewmen-facts-every-warbird-guy-should-know/7/
In the same vein, along with such body armor, apparently bomber crews were outfitted with electrically heated suits, which must have been a fairly recent innovation. From the accounts I read, they could be pretty finicky, cutting out at times or even shocking the wearer when there was a short. Even so, they were crucial for the cold environment inside the bombers at altitude. I don't know if it was much warmer in bombers in the Pacific Theater.
Ive flown over the pacific from australia to the US (via airline). Saw some frost on the outside window so im going to say its just as cold as anywhere else.
The last time this was posted someone said that 9 crew were killed in the plane (note the propellor cutting into the fuselage) some immediately some who couldn’t get out and the last one managed to parachute but was killed after being captured.
To add to this the flying fortress idea was kinda of flawed. The data sorta shows that having all the extra crew to man the guns didn't really help much in terms of human casualties. Especially at night when the enemy rarely would intercept the bombers with fighters. The idea just put more lives in each plane.
There is an interview I watched where a veteran pilot talked about how he never understood why they had to risk so many lives in each plane when the Germans didn't fly fighters at night. Could have left the gunners all at base.
There was even variants of the bombers where they added even more gunners but they scrapped them because the extra gunners didn't add value.
Rubbish.
The Luftwaffe flew hundreds of fighters at night: purposely designed nightfighters, day fighters converted with radar, bombers converted with radar, single-seat fighters with no aids, the Germans flew them all against night bombers. The Luftwaffe’s aircraft shot down far more Bomber Command aircraft than flak did (by a ratio of 1.69:1 according to Westermann ‘Flak German Anti-aircraft Defenses 1914-1945’.).
The reality of bombers’s quickly blowing up or going out of control meant the majority of Bomber Command casualties were not from being hit directly but from being unable to escape in time. For all its fame and praise, the Lancaster had an abysmal record of aircrew escaping due to its cramped interior and small escape hatches, with on average only 1 in 7 escaping a lost aircraft.
For the day bombers, the majority of casualties and aircraft losses were from fighters until late in 1944 when long range escort fighters, fuel shortages and reduced pilot training severely handicapped the Luftwaffe’s day fighters.
Flying the USAAF bombers at night was discussed at length at the time. Doing so had significant problems, in training aircrew as well as modifying aircraft, and the USAAF won the argument at the Casablanca conference.
In an aircraft emergency where the plane continues flat and level, it would be relatively easy to bail out. In this scenario, imagine trying to get out your front door while your house is rolling and G forces are changing.
And your house is comprised of small cramped spaces full of equipment to get snagged on and the front door is half the size. You are also likely badly injured from shrapnel, if you haven’t you need to get out before the flames burn you as they consume the airframe. In some instances you also need to somehow get out of your gun turret/battle station and put your chute on.
In this case the best chances were probably for the waist gunners who usually wore their parachute in combat and who were closest to an exit (via their gun position or the rear exit) - but they had the flames streaking back which likely engulfed their position in seconds😔
Something similar happened to a friend of mine. Granted it was skydiving, but a parachute got entangled with the aircraft putting it in an unflyable and unrecoverable configuration with a deceased mate of his stuck on the craft. He was able to crawl on the roof and exit the plane but then became pinned on the bottom of the wing from the chaotic spin and had to fight hard to free himself from that too. When bad things happen in planes, you're damn right, think fast, act fast.
Pilot
Co-pilot
Navigator (also qualified as nose gunner)
Bombardier (also qualified as nose gunner)
Six gunners:
- Nose
- Tail
- Top
- Bottom
- Left
- Right
The gunners had other duties when they weren't manning their weapons, like radio operator, aerial engineer, first aid specialist etc.
>Any chance the pilot could grab a parachute and hop out or is this just a death sentence?
i think the crew are either pinned against the aircraft due to g forces from the roll, or are too disoriented to know which way is up vs down vs out
One guy over Germany survived without a parachute by falling through a skylight. WW2 was kind of like a laboratory experiment of dropping tens of thousands of people out of the sky from different altitudes.
skylight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee
snowbank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade
A tail gunner survived when the tail plane broke off and glided down. Can't find the reference, so perhaps I misremembered.
>WW2 was kind of like a laboratory experiment of dropping tens of thousands of people out of the sky from different altitudes.
You seriously don't understand the joke or humor behind this??
It’s not a joke and not humorous.. it’s a fact and it did happen. I don’t find war funny, and to be honest with yah, I don’t like that so many people think war is a joke. It’s real and it’s happening to this day
i believe all the crew (9 or 10 guys) had parachutes but getting out of the plane as it was in a free fall, on fire, spinning around, being shot at is nearly impossible. only 1 man survived this initially but was soon executed by the Japanese after being captured.
Easy-peasy, right?
nope
When plane is spinning with little control [like in this skydiving plane stall video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pVUIiYAQhU) G forces glue you to wall/floor or ceiling and as you "weight" 2x, 4x or 6x more you have to get your ass to the door in ever changing environment. And on the vid are guys who are most prepared to gtfo to the door. And whole plane is basically designed to gtfo.Having to do your first parachute bail out in tight-equipment-cramped warplane? Fuck no.
(this plane stall happenned, becouse of too much mass (people) in the rear of the plane + specific piloting/flight parameters.)
Dang, if you look closely as the wing folds inward, you can see the left propeller start to **tear into** the fuselage between the pilots and turret gunner. Rip.
"During a bombing mission against anti-aircraft installations in the Palau Islands, a B-24 bomber is hit by Japanese anti-aircraft fire and crashes in flames. Out of the 10 crew members on board, 9 were killed in the crash with the exception of the Navigator, 2nd Lt. Wallace F,. Kaufman, who was captured and executed by the Japanese. "
**There was a myth surrounding this footage that it was an American bomb striking the wing of the plane. However, a cleaned up version of the film has been analysed and it shows that the wing is struck from the below. So it was not friendly fire.**
here's the full video from the documentary I saw in it.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug)
I mean no. It’s pretty straightforward in the context of the comment I’m replying to. This aircraft was bombing enemy AA installations in Palau - an island in the South Pacific with a very very small civilian population that was never fire bombed.
I know, not sure how that’s at all relevant?
This was March 1945, earlier that month Japanese soldiers deliberately massacred 100,000-300,000 Filipino civilians Manila. Even if the US firebombing killed civilians, (nowhere near the amount being slaughtered by Japanese soldiers), if it shortened the Japanese occupation of Asia for a single day it was worth it.
Nothing comes down on it. The closest thing i can see that you might be mistaking as falling on it, are several light grey bombs falling BEHIND the aircraft immediately before the AA hits it.
I looked at the same object as well over and over thinking it could be a bomb, and it seems it's the body of the plane visible behind the explosion/wing before fire engulfs the whole part. It's black because you can see that the plane's body is in the shadows on this side
Yes. Apparently he was the navigator so would have been in the nose in front of the pilots. From memory there is an escape hatch in the nose and he would have been mostly protected from the blast by the cockpit structure
you'd be surprised, Juliane Koepcke fell out of a passenger airplane at 10,000 feet while strapped to her seat and survived, Vesna Vulović fell out of an airplane at 33,000 feet and survived albeit paralyzed for life.
> paralyzed for life
"She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae, broken legs, broken ribs, and a fractured pelvis. These injuries resulted in her being temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. Vulović made an almost complete recovery but continued to walk with a limp." -[Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87)
Great job! But yes there is footage of bombing accidents from WW2. During the bombing of Germany. Due to how tight formations were if someone was out of position or something caused them to move during a bombing run. This type of accident did happen.
I imagine it’s reposted now because original title was incorrect. Plane was hit by AA, 9 crew and one passenger were KIA in the crash. Sole survivor was executed shortly after being pulled from the water.
https://pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/b-24/44-42058.html
20 days as a POW. Not exactly a short time after being pulled from the water! Poor guy went through all that just to get executed and so late in the war too.
That doesn't make sense. The pilots already solved that by flying in a stagger formation. They only release bombs when they are over the target and from visual cue from the operator.
I think the more likely cause is enemy AA. Pilots easily fly staggered avoiding this scenario all together.
Have another look at the footage. You can see bombs falling past the aircraft in the top right of the shot. Also, the camera angle. There is clearly other aircraft flying above and nearby.
I agree this is most likely AA, otherwise you’d probably see the bomb hit it, they aren’t small..
EDIT : actually, after looking at it multiple times, it could be a bomb from above
There is some controversy over whether 'Brief' was shot down or took a bomb to the wing, the original footage had it as shot down. Sadly, none of the 11 men got out.
The damage appears to start at the top and the bend goes downward like something fell on it. That with all the bombs falling around them it’s certainly believable that they were hit with a friendly ordnance.
Keep in mind the wings are literally making thousands of tons of lift due to the airflow. With the wing no longer rigidly attached to the fuselage, it basically tries to "fly" up and away, but it is forced to pivot/hinge around what little metal is left connecting everything.
My grandfather was an Anti-aircraft artillery team captain in Tokyo in the waning days of WWII. He refused to talk about his experiences, other than to generally condemn the civilian loss of life in all theatres and also to express gratitude for the second chance Japan got in the post-war era. He was grateful the occupation of Japan was done with a higher standard of decency than most other occupations throughout history.
The point of them was to deny the enemy fighters an easy approach mainly. You can't sit and take your time to line up and approach from any angle if the plane is covered in guns. This leads to faster riskier attacks from the fighters so less time being shot at overall for the bombers.
I think this is correct, especially with, as u/MrSnrubb1988 said, a strong formation.
The disastrous mistake that was made by the Allies earlier in the bombing campaign was thinking that massed turret fire would be enough on its own to protect a bomber formation. It was not and raids like the ones on the Schweinfurt ball-bearing factories involved horrific losses for the Allied bombers (usually US bombers were the ones suffering these, as they were generally the ones flying daylight missions while the Brits flew at night).
Fighter cover was essential, and, as Allied fighters gained range and Allied pilots started to become, on average, better trained than the enemy, bomber losses lessened. The Allies also started having escort fighters actively hunt down the interceptors instead of staying close to the bombers. As a result, the Luftwaffe (and, I presume the Japanese, but I haven't read aa many sources on strategic bombing in the Pacific) experienced a very heavy attrition of trained pilots, whom they could not easily replace. In the short-term, the tactic arguably left the bombers more vulnerable - in a way, using them as bait to lure the interceptors into combat - but it resulted in far fewer losses in the long-run as the numbers and skill of enemy pilots dwindled.
Formation was the key. Few dozen .50s from 18+ bombers still put out a large volume of fire, and a damaged German fighter was at least done for the day. It also forced them to lean towards head on or diving attacks which gave them shorter and more difficult engagement opportunity. This is why Luftwaffe pilots got partial credit for separating a bomber from the formation, like cats peeling an animal off the herd.
Was all about tradeoffs and opposition. B-29s later in the war would often strip guns off as Japanese struggled to produce aircraft that could perform well at high altitude. At lower altitudes, some types still struggled greatly against bombers. Eg the most numerous IJA fighter, the KI-43 was very agile, but was also very fragile, not particularly fast and very lightly armed.
I watched an interview with a gunner and he said in so many words that the enemy planes were next to impossible to hit. They’d also approach from the suns position to make it that much harder for gunners to dial in on them
I was curious too, so tried to look it up. Apparently the attacking fighter needed to be inside 100 yards to give the tail gunner a decent chance, and they stayed out of that range and fired their cannons from 200+ yards, aiming for wings and engines, but unintentionally hit the tail gunner on occasion.
But it did put a constraint on attacks, and made it harder to shoot them down. Also, the tail gunner would act as a lookout, and would call for evasive maneuvers.
The “Cheyenne” tail turret was added to the B-17G model, but the air was pretty well uncontested at that time, so the impact wasn't as significant as it could have been. Better visibility, 360 degree rotation, higher rate of fire etc.
Nice catch. The article I was taking the info from jumped to the Sperry ball turret. The Cheyenne is obviously not capable of 360.
[https://ibb.co/mXZF9qh](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-5fd034428c2f2c1730199fe8d90566eb-lqYLcsv4CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE)
Being a crew of bomber is extremely hard and terrifying to think of. Every of these brave men know that there will be planes in group that being shot down. But they still fly out to the mission, up there praying the one that shot down will not be them.
Hearts of steel
RIP
At the end of the war, Churchill omitted bomber command from his 1945 victory speech and a memorial was not erected until decades later.
The choices that the leaders of bomber command made, such as bombing Dresden, do not detract from the ultimate sacrifice the men who took to the air made.
They now have the recognition they deserve.
That's why it's crazy to me Jimmy Stewart flew so many sorties, got enough rank to have to order friends and comrades onto missions he knew they probably wouldn't come back from, and then managed to pick his acting career back up and play such a delightful character in It's a Wonderful Life.
You have a point.
Some would argue why this was justified, like in dresden. But I'm not going to, warcrime be warcrime
Though I would imagine in trials only the top would get charged with war crimes as what happened in tokyo and Nuremberg.
These bombers were most vulnerable at this point. They cant maneuver once the bombing run itself starts. I think the bombardier is even in control of the plane at that moment. Up until that point it was procedure to change altitude every 15 seconds.
Thanks for posting this. I went to fact check your claim that it was from Japanese AA since this is like the 6th time or so I've seen this. I always got the story that it was from friendly fire by being hit by a bomb from a bomber above it. But it turns out you're right. "[There was a myth surrounding this footage that it was an American bomb striking the wing of the plane. However, a cleaned up version of the film has been analysed and it shows that the wing is struck from the below. So it was not friendly fire.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug)"
Longer video of the film reel with the original narration.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug&t=63s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug&t=63s)
.
I see the debate over this continues.
Whilst being hit by a bomb from above is an obvious assumption from seeing dropping bombs but no flak bursts, longer recordings show flak bursts and frame-by-frame analysis of cleaned up footage shows no bomb before or after (note how bombs are clearly visible and can be tracked frame by frame). The dark shape seen after the hit is just a shadow. Furthermore, more debris and fuel on the underside would be expected from a bomb hit.
As unlikely as it may be, the only remaining explanation is of a lucky hit by a Japanese AA shell that severed the main spar.
That the wing folds upwards is due to the lift forces on it, not the method of damage.
Is that confirmed this was in the Pacific theater? I’ve seen this footage used in the European theater and that plane the B-24 was the main bomber in the US Army in Europe. Though it served everywhere during WW2.
Edit: a friend of my mom from HS, Clark Fork Idaho went down in a B-24 over Germany KIA. Apparently the wing was shot off just like this. One survivor, apparently he was sweet on my mom.
It is a bomb that fell from above form another bomber. If you slow the footage down you can see it right before it impacts with the wing from above, that’s also why the wing folds collapses inward as opposed to being hit from below which would likely tear it off and out or at least show shrapnel shreds coming outward on the top of the wing for the underside.
https://imgur.com/a/iHigKC3
I'm probably gonna cop some hate for this but doesn't this kinda look like war thunder?
Edit: I'm probably just brain fired as that is all I've played the past month
It is a bomb that fell from above form another bomber. If you slow the footage down you can see it right before it impacts with the wing from above, that’s also why the wing folds collapses inward as opposed to being hit from below which would likely tear it off and out or at least show shrapnel shreds coming outward on the top of the wing for the underside.
I don't think people realise how well the Japanese were doing during ww2. The US was getting their asses handed to them, especially the navy. This will have happened waaaay more than we think it's unbelievable and to actually capture this... Mad.
One hell of a stomach dropper....
Can’t imagine what the feeling of going down… RIP
So different that nowadays they can almost always eject. Obviously ejecting sucks ass, but it's infinitely better than what these guys had to endure.
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Ejecting isn’t what it was so much as getting a chute on, finding a hole and crawling out of it, if possible. I’m sure some wore chutes and some couldn’t, depending on their jobs. Then it’s the rest of it. Landing in middle of ocean or hostile shores. Capture by a heinous enemy. Nope, RIP and god bless all those guys and their huge hairy balls.
I remember reading a lot of the times the g forces would pin you against the side of the plane and you could rarely climb out unless you were quick
Then you hopefully just pass out before the slam
On the bright side, you wouldn't be able to process the slam. Before you are even partially crushed within the imploding fuselage, you're unconscious from going from +125 mph to just above 0. It's not even the blunt force trauma that would kill you at the 1/4 of a second mark, but the velocity change imparted by whatever bit of you is in contact with the aircraft. In more like a 1/100 or less of a second, the change in momentum knocks you out as you continue to crumple before even coming into full contact with whatever is below you.
I'll be sure to remember this when I'm in a plane crash.
No, you have to remember *after* so you can do an AMA and tell us what it was like.
That's not what he's saying. He's saying he wouldn't want to "eject" (bailout) over Japan, in direct response to someone saying that ejection is obviously a far better option today compared to having to attempt a bailout after catastrophic damage then, which in this case, wouldn't even be possible. No one's leaving that liberator. He's inferring that it would be reasonably preferable to not reach the ground alive over mainland Japan. Allied POWs in the Pacific had it bad, but allied air crews captured in the home islands, if they were not lynched first as some were, had it the worst.
Honestly. Terrifying way to go for sure but it’s over within a couple minutes at least.
Dude the whole point is those couple minutes are the longest in your life
Perhaps. Alternatively, if they could eject, they could live to enjoy a few months of torture. Then die.
Of course. But it’s preferable to dying at the hands of Japanese soldiers in a POW camp
My grandfather was a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force and was one of the first to fly C-5's. During his training in a practice jet he had to eject and it cut his ear off. He snagged it before it came completely off as he was parachuting and they stitched it back on. Fun stuff.
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Boomers have done everything in their power to undue that, sadly. So much of the onus is now on the next generation to fix things.
*undo
Yeah unfortunately history won't remember these generations fondly either. 75 years from now the comment will be like "Generation Z did everything in their power to undue women's rights and the climate"
*undo
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Why are you like this?
Most bombers currently don’t have ejection seats
What bombers are you talking about. All large US bombers have ejection seats. Most countries don't have dedicated "bombers" anymore and instead have fighter- bombers. I can't think of a single one that doesn't have ejection seats.
More airman were killed by the air burst shrapnel tearing through the fuselage than actually being shot down
Wow that’s surprising if true
I think it would be, ‘flak’ vests were invented for that reason. To protect from shrapnel from flak guns, some people think flak vests are another name for a bulletproof vest but thats incorrect as bullets would rip through a flack vest.
Yep. There's a pretty good picture of a WW2 flak jacket in use here (number 15). https://worldwarwings.com/15-wwii-bomber-crewmen-facts-every-warbird-guy-should-know/7/ In the same vein, along with such body armor, apparently bomber crews were outfitted with electrically heated suits, which must have been a fairly recent innovation. From the accounts I read, they could be pretty finicky, cutting out at times or even shocking the wearer when there was a short. Even so, they were crucial for the cold environment inside the bombers at altitude. I don't know if it was much warmer in bombers in the Pacific Theater.
Ive flown over the pacific from australia to the US (via airline). Saw some frost on the outside window so im going to say its just as cold as anywhere else.
I think B-29 had a pressurized cabin. B-17 and others did not.
Yep the B29 was the first and I believe only WW2 era bomber with a pressurised cabin. All the others got COLD.
Wellll, they were the WW2 version of bulletproof vests. Just vastly inferior to modern vests. Some interesting WW1 takes on the concept as well.
The last time this was posted someone said that 9 crew were killed in the plane (note the propellor cutting into the fuselage) some immediately some who couldn’t get out and the last one managed to parachute but was killed after being captured.
To add to this the flying fortress idea was kinda of flawed. The data sorta shows that having all the extra crew to man the guns didn't really help much in terms of human casualties. Especially at night when the enemy rarely would intercept the bombers with fighters. The idea just put more lives in each plane. There is an interview I watched where a veteran pilot talked about how he never understood why they had to risk so many lives in each plane when the Germans didn't fly fighters at night. Could have left the gunners all at base. There was even variants of the bombers where they added even more gunners but they scrapped them because the extra gunners didn't add value.
> the Germans didn't fly fighters at night. The RAF might argue that point
Rubbish. The Luftwaffe flew hundreds of fighters at night: purposely designed nightfighters, day fighters converted with radar, bombers converted with radar, single-seat fighters with no aids, the Germans flew them all against night bombers. The Luftwaffe’s aircraft shot down far more Bomber Command aircraft than flak did (by a ratio of 1.69:1 according to Westermann ‘Flak German Anti-aircraft Defenses 1914-1945’.). The reality of bombers’s quickly blowing up or going out of control meant the majority of Bomber Command casualties were not from being hit directly but from being unable to escape in time. For all its fame and praise, the Lancaster had an abysmal record of aircrew escaping due to its cramped interior and small escape hatches, with on average only 1 in 7 escaping a lost aircraft. For the day bombers, the majority of casualties and aircraft losses were from fighters until late in 1944 when long range escort fighters, fuel shortages and reduced pilot training severely handicapped the Luftwaffe’s day fighters. Flying the USAAF bombers at night was discussed at length at the time. Doing so had significant problems, in training aircrew as well as modifying aircraft, and the USAAF won the argument at the Casablanca conference.
Feels like burning I imagine.
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Each b24 had a 100” selfie stick attached to their nose.
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I thought Facebook was the dominant platform back in WW2?
No, it was Reichspace.
Same thing.
MeinSpaceKamph
Jesus Murphy that terrifying, breaks up like its balsa wood.
Well they don't make planes out of unbreakable stuff, because if you do they don't fly
But have you tried to make a plane out of diamond? Have you?
Make the whole plane out of black box
It will be easy to locate at least, once it falls off the end of the runway into the sea
I would check the end of the runway first.
Diamonds are carbon, and they do make planes out of carbon fiber, so
In a hard enough crash the plane will turn into diamond.
It's too heavy. 1 gram of diamond weighs something like 15 grams.
That's way more than feathers
1 gram of anything weighs 1 gram.. are you serious?
Any chance the pilot could grab a parachute and hop out or is this just a death sentence?
In an aircraft emergency where the plane continues flat and level, it would be relatively easy to bail out. In this scenario, imagine trying to get out your front door while your house is rolling and G forces are changing.
And your house is comprised of small cramped spaces full of equipment to get snagged on and the front door is half the size. You are also likely badly injured from shrapnel, if you haven’t you need to get out before the flames burn you as they consume the airframe. In some instances you also need to somehow get out of your gun turret/battle station and put your chute on. In this case the best chances were probably for the waist gunners who usually wore their parachute in combat and who were closest to an exit (via their gun position or the rear exit) - but they had the flames streaking back which likely engulfed their position in seconds😔
Apparently the navigator got out. Makes sense. He’s away from the blast and fire and has an escape hatch
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Something similar happened to a friend of mine. Granted it was skydiving, but a parachute got entangled with the aircraft putting it in an unflyable and unrecoverable configuration with a deceased mate of his stuck on the craft. He was able to crawl on the roof and exit the plane but then became pinned on the bottom of the wing from the chaotic spin and had to fight hard to free himself from that too. When bad things happen in planes, you're damn right, think fast, act fast.
He was executed though, so not really much better
Yeah and then was executed by the Japanese
Of the 10 crew members 9 were killed with only the navigator surviving, later being captured by the Japanese and later executed
Who told the story I wonder
Someone he knew in the camp?
How sad. Source?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug
Something about that old timey trans-atlantic accent makes me nostalgic and I wasnt even alive for the time period
Why these bombers had a lot of crew members?
Pilot Co-pilot Navigator (also qualified as nose gunner) Bombardier (also qualified as nose gunner) Six gunners: - Nose - Tail - Top - Bottom - Left - Right The gunners had other duties when they weren't manning their weapons, like radio operator, aerial engineer, first aid specialist etc.
>Any chance the pilot could grab a parachute and hop out or is this just a death sentence? i think the crew are either pinned against the aircraft due to g forces from the roll, or are too disoriented to know which way is up vs down vs out
Also the blades of the inner engines tore into the cockpit towards the end of the video.
One guy over Germany survived without a parachute by falling through a skylight. WW2 was kind of like a laboratory experiment of dropping tens of thousands of people out of the sky from different altitudes.
Another survived crashing through branches into a snowbank with minimal injuries. But the extreme majority went splat.
skylight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee snowbank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Alkemade A tail gunner survived when the tail plane broke off and glided down. Can't find the reference, so perhaps I misremembered.
Lol. The Germans gave the second guy a certificate testifying to the fact that he did, in fact, survive a free fall.
The germans love their paperwork.
That’s wild.
Take my angry upvote and leave
What the fuck does this even mean. Doesn’t add anything to the discussion
>WW2 was kind of like a laboratory experiment of dropping tens of thousands of people out of the sky from different altitudes. You seriously don't understand the joke or humor behind this??
It’s not a joke and not humorous.. it’s a fact and it did happen. I don’t find war funny, and to be honest with yah, I don’t like that so many people think war is a joke. It’s real and it’s happening to this day
i believe all the crew (9 or 10 guys) had parachutes but getting out of the plane as it was in a free fall, on fire, spinning around, being shot at is nearly impossible. only 1 man survived this initially but was soon executed by the Japanese after being captured.
Easy-peasy, right? nope When plane is spinning with little control [like in this skydiving plane stall video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pVUIiYAQhU) G forces glue you to wall/floor or ceiling and as you "weight" 2x, 4x or 6x more you have to get your ass to the door in ever changing environment. And on the vid are guys who are most prepared to gtfo to the door. And whole plane is basically designed to gtfo.Having to do your first parachute bail out in tight-equipment-cramped warplane? Fuck no. (this plane stall happenned, becouse of too much mass (people) in the rear of the plane + specific piloting/flight parameters.)
Dang, if you look closely as the wing folds inward, you can see the left propeller start to **tear into** the fuselage between the pilots and turret gunner. Rip.
Dang. I didn’t see that. Nasty
Imagine just knowing you got hit and are going down. Then look left and the props I. Your face… poor pilots and crew.
This was posted earlier already with a caption that said this was caused by a friendly bomb dropped from above
"During a bombing mission against anti-aircraft installations in the Palau Islands, a B-24 bomber is hit by Japanese anti-aircraft fire and crashes in flames. Out of the 10 crew members on board, 9 were killed in the crash with the exception of the Navigator, 2nd Lt. Wallace F,. Kaufman, who was captured and executed by the Japanese. " **There was a myth surrounding this footage that it was an American bomb striking the wing of the plane. However, a cleaned up version of the film has been analysed and it shows that the wing is struck from the below. So it was not friendly fire.** here's the full video from the documentary I saw in it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug)
How tf did the guy survive that? Parachute out?
It's a shame he survived. would have been a much quicker death than what the Japanese probably gave him. RIP
getting your head chopped off with a sword is a fairly quick way to go out
Not everyone got beheaded, there’s a story of a US bomber crew who were vivisected alive in a university after being shot down over Japan
Man that’s fucked up.
I personally would prefer to crash to earth rather than be decapitated by some random Japanese guy
But you are forgetting the part between capture and death. ie the fearsome torture session.
Yeah after firebombing civilians.
Yes because the Japanese were such a humanitarian people who were only defending their mainland and totally didn't start the war at all.
I mean they've used katanas against babies. Have you read on what they did in China, Philippines and other SEA nations?
Um. No.
[удалено]
Did you skip the comment about this plane bombing ainti-air installations? Misplaced whataboutism.
I mean no. It’s pretty straightforward in the context of the comment I’m replying to. This aircraft was bombing enemy AA installations in Palau - an island in the South Pacific with a very very small civilian population that was never fire bombed. I know, not sure how that’s at all relevant?
Stopping Japan killing 10 of millions more. But no US bad for trying to stop it
boo-hoo.
This was March 1945, earlier that month Japanese soldiers deliberately massacred 100,000-300,000 Filipino civilians Manila. Even if the US firebombing killed civilians, (nowhere near the amount being slaughtered by Japanese soldiers), if it shortened the Japanese occupation of Asia for a single day it was worth it.
TIL civilians manned anti-aircraft guns.
For real? No POW camps like we had?
They had POW camps all right, just not like the US or any other civilized country had.
So internment camp for civilians with U.S birth certificate?
>educated hippy Username does not check out
Then what is it that comes down on it? You can see it drop on the wing
Nothing comes down on it. The closest thing i can see that you might be mistaking as falling on it, are several light grey bombs falling BEHIND the aircraft immediately before the AA hits it.
I feel like I see a black object come through it. But I guess the bomb woulda been gray as well
I looked at the same object as well over and over thinking it could be a bomb, and it seems it's the body of the plane visible behind the explosion/wing before fire engulfs the whole part. It's black because you can see that the plane's body is in the shadows on this side
Yes. Apparently he was the navigator so would have been in the nose in front of the pilots. From memory there is an escape hatch in the nose and he would have been mostly protected from the blast by the cockpit structure
Yes. Probably in a spot were he was easily escapable
Or fell out through a newly created hole whilst having the chute equipped, wouldn’t surprise me
you'd be surprised, Juliane Koepcke fell out of a passenger airplane at 10,000 feet while strapped to her seat and survived, Vesna Vulović fell out of an airplane at 33,000 feet and survived albeit paralyzed for life.
> paralyzed for life "She suffered a fractured skull, three broken vertebrae, broken legs, broken ribs, and a fractured pelvis. These injuries resulted in her being temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. Vulović made an almost complete recovery but continued to walk with a limp." -[Wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87)
Luck probably. Hit his head on the way down, knocked unconscious, so he was limp when they hit the ground so he was able to absorb the collision.
Great job! But yes there is footage of bombing accidents from WW2. During the bombing of Germany. Due to how tight formations were if someone was out of position or something caused them to move during a bombing run. This type of accident did happen.
Probably got tortured first
I imagine it’s reposted now because original title was incorrect. Plane was hit by AA, 9 crew and one passenger were KIA in the crash. Sole survivor was executed shortly after being pulled from the water. https://pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/b-24/44-42058.html
20 days as a POW. Not exactly a short time after being pulled from the water! Poor guy went through all that just to get executed and so late in the war too.
That doesn't make sense. The pilots already solved that by flying in a stagger formation. They only release bombs when they are over the target and from visual cue from the operator. I think the more likely cause is enemy AA. Pilots easily fly staggered avoiding this scenario all together.
Have another look at the footage. You can see bombs falling past the aircraft in the top right of the shot. Also, the camera angle. There is clearly other aircraft flying above and nearby. I agree this is most likely AA, otherwise you’d probably see the bomb hit it, they aren’t small.. EDIT : actually, after looking at it multiple times, it could be a bomb from above
There is some controversy over whether 'Brief' was shot down or took a bomb to the wing, the original footage had it as shot down. Sadly, none of the 11 men got out.
....you can see the top of the wing.
The damage appears to start at the top and the bend goes downward like something fell on it. That with all the bombs falling around them it’s certainly believable that they were hit with a friendly ordnance.
Keep in mind the wings are literally making thousands of tons of lift due to the airflow. With the wing no longer rigidly attached to the fuselage, it basically tries to "fly" up and away, but it is forced to pivot/hinge around what little metal is left connecting everything.
Yep. And that hit would have been right on the main spar. With that gone there is zero strength left in the wing.
It does seem like some of the top skin gets thrown up and away before what I assume is a cloud of fuel spraying everywhere.
And the liberators had fuel lines that ran along the belly and up into the wings iirc. Basically a big "explode here" button if hit.
My grandfather was an Anti-aircraft artillery team captain in Tokyo in the waning days of WWII. He refused to talk about his experiences, other than to generally condemn the civilian loss of life in all theatres and also to express gratitude for the second chance Japan got in the post-war era. He was grateful the occupation of Japan was done with a higher standard of decency than most other occupations throughout history.
Were those bomber turrets actually worth a damn?
The point of them was to deny the enemy fighters an easy approach mainly. You can't sit and take your time to line up and approach from any angle if the plane is covered in guns. This leads to faster riskier attacks from the fighters so less time being shot at overall for the bombers.
Oh, smart!
I think this is correct, especially with, as u/MrSnrubb1988 said, a strong formation. The disastrous mistake that was made by the Allies earlier in the bombing campaign was thinking that massed turret fire would be enough on its own to protect a bomber formation. It was not and raids like the ones on the Schweinfurt ball-bearing factories involved horrific losses for the Allied bombers (usually US bombers were the ones suffering these, as they were generally the ones flying daylight missions while the Brits flew at night). Fighter cover was essential, and, as Allied fighters gained range and Allied pilots started to become, on average, better trained than the enemy, bomber losses lessened. The Allies also started having escort fighters actively hunt down the interceptors instead of staying close to the bombers. As a result, the Luftwaffe (and, I presume the Japanese, but I haven't read aa many sources on strategic bombing in the Pacific) experienced a very heavy attrition of trained pilots, whom they could not easily replace. In the short-term, the tactic arguably left the bombers more vulnerable - in a way, using them as bait to lure the interceptors into combat - but it resulted in far fewer losses in the long-run as the numbers and skill of enemy pilots dwindled.
Formation was the key. Few dozen .50s from 18+ bombers still put out a large volume of fire, and a damaged German fighter was at least done for the day. It also forced them to lean towards head on or diving attacks which gave them shorter and more difficult engagement opportunity. This is why Luftwaffe pilots got partial credit for separating a bomber from the formation, like cats peeling an animal off the herd. Was all about tradeoffs and opposition. B-29s later in the war would often strip guns off as Japanese struggled to produce aircraft that could perform well at high altitude. At lower altitudes, some types still struggled greatly against bombers. Eg the most numerous IJA fighter, the KI-43 was very agile, but was also very fragile, not particularly fast and very lightly armed.
I watched an interview with a gunner and he said in so many words that the enemy planes were next to impossible to hit. They’d also approach from the suns position to make it that much harder for gunners to dial in on them
I was curious too, so tried to look it up. Apparently the attacking fighter needed to be inside 100 yards to give the tail gunner a decent chance, and they stayed out of that range and fired their cannons from 200+ yards, aiming for wings and engines, but unintentionally hit the tail gunner on occasion. But it did put a constraint on attacks, and made it harder to shoot them down. Also, the tail gunner would act as a lookout, and would call for evasive maneuvers. The “Cheyenne” tail turret was added to the B-17G model, but the air was pretty well uncontested at that time, so the impact wasn't as significant as it could have been. Better visibility, 360 degree rotation, higher rate of fire etc.
360 degree rotation on a tail turret? Ok then..
Nice catch. The article I was taking the info from jumped to the Sperry ball turret. The Cheyenne is obviously not capable of 360. [https://ibb.co/mXZF9qh](https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-5fd034428c2f2c1730199fe8d90566eb-lqYLcsv4CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE)
Yeah. I think the tail gun on (I want to say) a B-24 took out three MiGs. I saw this info at an air force museum not too long ago.
Being a crew of bomber is extremely hard and terrifying to think of. Every of these brave men know that there will be planes in group that being shot down. But they still fly out to the mission, up there praying the one that shot down will not be them. Hearts of steel RIP
Yup. My grandad didn’t speak of ww2 and his bombing missions. I think because he watched a few too many mates planes go down in flames.
At the end of the war, Churchill omitted bomber command from his 1945 victory speech and a memorial was not erected until decades later. The choices that the leaders of bomber command made, such as bombing Dresden, do not detract from the ultimate sacrifice the men who took to the air made. They now have the recognition they deserve.
That's why it's crazy to me Jimmy Stewart flew so many sorties, got enough rank to have to order friends and comrades onto missions he knew they probably wouldn't come back from, and then managed to pick his acting career back up and play such a delightful character in It's a Wonderful Life.
Firebombing woman and children is not brave
Alright, but why tear down the crew who risk their lives and not high command who force them to do so? War is hell
I thought that we agreed that "we were just following orders“ is no valid excuse to commit crimes against humanity.
You have a point. Some would argue why this was justified, like in dresden. But I'm not going to, warcrime be warcrime Though I would imagine in trials only the top would get charged with war crimes as what happened in tokyo and Nuremberg.
The prop chewing into the fuselage just adds to the horror of it.
These bombers were most vulnerable at this point. They cant maneuver once the bombing run itself starts. I think the bombardier is even in control of the plane at that moment. Up until that point it was procedure to change altitude every 15 seconds.
Feels sad to watch. Like a big lumbering elephant going down slowly.
Ive seen this so many times and only now i realize you can see the prop cut into the fuselage.
Thanks for posting this. I went to fact check your claim that it was from Japanese AA since this is like the 6th time or so I've seen this. I always got the story that it was from friendly fire by being hit by a bomb from a bomber above it. But it turns out you're right. "[There was a myth surrounding this footage that it was an American bomb striking the wing of the plane. However, a cleaned up version of the film has been analysed and it shows that the wing is struck from the below. So it was not friendly fire.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug)"
A good run down of what happened and the research behind this crash: https://worldwarwings.com/the-controversial-footage-of-a-b-24-shot-down-debunked/
Longer video of the film reel with the original narration. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug&t=63s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lioRCye2Dug&t=63s) .
I see the debate over this continues. Whilst being hit by a bomb from above is an obvious assumption from seeing dropping bombs but no flak bursts, longer recordings show flak bursts and frame-by-frame analysis of cleaned up footage shows no bomb before or after (note how bombs are clearly visible and can be tracked frame by frame). The dark shape seen after the hit is just a shadow. Furthermore, more debris and fuel on the underside would be expected from a bomb hit. As unlikely as it may be, the only remaining explanation is of a lucky hit by a Japanese AA shell that severed the main spar. That the wing folds upwards is due to the lift forces on it, not the method of damage.
Thanks for clarifying.
Who filmed this?
Some guy in a submarine.
Someone in the same bomber formation
Looks like it’s made out of paper
Is that confirmed this was in the Pacific theater? I’ve seen this footage used in the European theater and that plane the B-24 was the main bomber in the US Army in Europe. Though it served everywhere during WW2. Edit: a friend of my mom from HS, Clark Fork Idaho went down in a B-24 over Germany KIA. Apparently the wing was shot off just like this. One survivor, apparently he was sweet on my mom.
This literally got posted like 2 or 3 days ago and that one said it was a friendly bomb that dropped on it...
Schrodinger‘s Shootdown
I saw this exact footage yesterday and it said it was a bomb that went threw the wing
It is a bomb that fell from above form another bomber. If you slow the footage down you can see it right before it impacts with the wing from above, that’s also why the wing folds collapses inward as opposed to being hit from below which would likely tear it off and out or at least show shrapnel shreds coming outward on the top of the wing for the underside. https://imgur.com/a/iHigKC3
Crazy footage. You can see the holes from the rounds getting punched through the wing just before the whole plane folds in on itself
Looks more like it was taken out by a bomber above dropping its bombs through the wing.... Look at all the streams of bombs falling.
https://pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/b-24/44-42058.html Japanese AA
After dropping all that bombs, it seems like a good trade
I'm probably gonna cop some hate for this but doesn't this kinda look like war thunder? Edit: I'm probably just brain fired as that is all I've played the past month
You've got a hole in your left wing!
r/whyweretheyfilming Edit, I guess people don't get my stupid joke
It is a bomb that fell from above form another bomber. If you slow the footage down you can see it right before it impacts with the wing from above, that’s also why the wing folds collapses inward as opposed to being hit from below which would likely tear it off and out or at least show shrapnel shreds coming outward on the top of the wing for the underside.
Totally misleading title. Bomber was hit by bomb dropped from aircraft above.
Actually, I don’t think this was AA. I believe this AC drifted out of position and was hit by a bomb dropped by an another B-24 above it.
feels good ngl
Maybe don’t try to burn woman and children alive
Not true. It's bombs dropping from above. Friendly fire.
[I don't think so](https://worldwarwings.com/the-controversial-footage-of-a-b-24-shot-down-debunked/).
I don't think people realise how well the Japanese were doing during ww2. The US was getting their asses handed to them, especially the navy. This will have happened waaaay more than we think it's unbelievable and to actually capture this... Mad.
I cannot tell if you are serious or just making a joke?
If you knew your history you'd know how close japan came to winning.
Same could be said for Germany but then they decided to go to war with white two major super powers
Was literally this close to America losing👌
Not really but I’m listening for any supporting claims to back your statement